The Quiet Corners of a Newer Stonebridge Home
Spiders settle where there is food and where nothing moves them on, and both are close at hand here. The estate's landscaping, the green edge along the River Brent and Brent River Park, and the rough verges beside the North Circular all produce a great deal more flying insect life than a mown lawn does, and the lights over doors and walkways draw it towards the buildings after dark. What attracts spiders into a property explains why the food supply decides nearly everything.
Garages, stores and meter cupboards
A garage or store holding bikes, tools and boxes rather than a car stays cool, dry and largely undisturbed, and the gap under the door lets insects and spiders walk in. Webs collect along the roof line, behind anything that has not been shifted for a year, and inside a meter cupboard nobody opens between readings. Where a store opens into the home through an internal door, spiders find their way into the utility room or hall beyond it.
Porches, balcony recesses and bin stores
Outside, the sheltered spots are the canopy over a front door, the recess of a walkway or balcony, and the shed. A communal bin store is a particularly good one, being dark, sheltered and full of flies. That is not yours to have treated, though: shared parts of the estate fall to the landlord or managing agent, as the Pest Control Stonebridge page sets out, so it is worth reporting rather than putting up with.
False widows by frames and outside lights
The noble false widow is glossy and dark brown, with a rounded body and pale markings, and it favours precisely these places: the corner of a window frame, the underside of a porch light, the back of a meter box. It is not regarded as dangerous and being bitten by one is an unusual event; a bite is generally likened to a bee or wasp sting. Anyone whose bite swells a great deal, or looks infected, should speak to a pharmacist or GP; signs of a severe allergic reaction mean calling 999. Are there dangerous spiders in Brent homes? goes further into it.
The Big Spider on the Landing in September
From late summer, male house spiders leave the webs they have spent the year in and set off looking for a female, which is why a big one turns up on the landing carpet or in the bath of an evening. They are not coming out of a nest and there is no infestation behind them; a few each autumn in a home with a garage and a garden is simply the season. The thing worth acting on looks different: webs, shed skins and egg sacs coming back to the same room week after week, which why spiders keep appearing in the same rooms examines.
What Spider Treatment Does, and What It Cannot Do
Treatment is aimed at rooms and outbuildings where spiders keep building up, and it brings the numbers there down. It will not stop spiders walking in from planting, verges and river-edge greenery, and it changes nothing about the insect supply that brought them in the first place. Whether pest control reduces spider problems is honest about that limit, and the rough ground and railway land around Neasden make the same point.
Sometimes the spiders are a symptom rather than the problem. A room quietly supporting other insects — carpet beetle larvae under a bed or along a skirting, or carpet moths in a wool rug — will hold more spiders than the room next door, and sorting out one without the other gets you nowhere. Whether lots of spiders mean another pest problem looks at the link.
Before the visit
- List the rooms and outbuildings where webs keep returning, and say which are inside the home
- Say whether the garage or store has an internal door through into the house
- Pull boxes and stored things away from the walls so that the corners can actually be reached
- If you think you have found a false widow, take a picture of it from well back
Spiders from outside will still wander in afterwards, autumn most of all. If webs build back up in the rooms that were treated, get in touch and say which ones.
Fewer Webs Around a Stonebridge Home
Light, gaps and clutter are the three things you can change. How to stop spiders coming back has more, where spiders hide inside homes says where to look first, and Spider Control Brent covers homes across the borough.
- Sweep webs and egg sacs from the garage roof line, the porch corners and the shed every few weeks
- Fit a brush strip along the bottom of a garage or store door
- Switch an outside light off when it is not needed, or use a warmer-coloured bulb where the fitting is yours to change
- Draw blinds after dark so that indoor light does not spill onto the glass of a patio door
- Move stored things into lidded crates instead of open cardboard, and stand them clear of the floor
- Cut back shrubs and climbers that touch a window frame or the porch
